Notes and Editorial Reviews

Michael Collins has been recording for Chandos what one might
call thematic ‘mood’ albums; virtuosity has been covered [CHAN10615]
and here is lyricism. Burgmüller’s Duo is a single movement,
but tripartite piece, dating from 1834. It assuredly lives up
to the disc billing, being profusely lyric, but in its central
panel cleverly evokes the operatic by means of declamatory piano
statements above which the clarinet spins vocalised curlicues
of decidedly virtuosic pretension. It hardly aspires to anything
especially deep, but makes for a good palette refreshing opener.
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Finzi’s wartime Bagatelles are a clarinet staple. Collins’s
subtly coloured, variegated tone is a perfect fit. He’s rhythmically
sharp in the Prelude, and elegantly relaxed in the Romance,
though I have to admit I do prefer John Denman’s slightly brisker
tempo. Collins however plays the Carol with disarming simplicity,
the tone remaining richly rounded, and he brings a very vocalised
sense to the Forlana with its echoes of the composer’s great
setting of Hardy’s For Life I Had Never Cared Greatly
and specifically the lines ‘Conditions of Doubt/Conditions that
leaked slowly out.’

Heinrich Joseph Baermann was an elite clarinettist of his time.
His Clarinet Quintet of 1821 was rediscovered in 1922 and claimed
to be a very early work by Wagner. Pamela Weston has arranged
the Adagio from the Quintet for clarinet and piano, and most
effectively, as it’s a lovely movement, rich and warm. Paul
Reade’s Suite from ‘The Victorian Kitchen Garden’ comes from
music for a TV series, and can be accompanied either by piano
(as here) or harp. The five gentle scenes are atmospheric and
engaging, the second (called ‘Spring’) having requisite jauntiness
and the third – ‘Mists’ – just the right sense of stillness.
I know Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel gets trotted out often
in one of its manifold arrangements, especially when mining
pathos in TV war documentaries – the Barber Adagio de nos
jours – but I can certainly take the composer’s clarinet/piano
version nicely. Nine minutes doesn’t seem a second too long.

And finally then to two very different French Clarinet sonatas.
The Saint-Saëns was composed at the very end of his long life.
It’s suffused with easy going charm and lyrical content. Collins
drops to the chalumeau register in the slow movement where the
piano’s rolled chords remind one very distinctly of César Franck.
Collins conveys the quietude and ending-without-regret quality
of this work very adeptly. The Poulenc too was a very late work,
composed the year before his death and dedicated to the memory
of Honegger. Again this is a convincingly argued performance.
It’s a touch more measured than, say, Richard Horsfield and
Ian Brown in the Nash Ensemble’s performance, but Collins and
Michael McHale balance the introversion of the Romanza with
the freewheeling dynamism of the finale well.

The warm recording comes courtesy of Potton Hall, an elite venue
of choice for chamber recitals.

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